Sonnet Xvi Poem by Philip Henry Savage

I LAID upon a rock beside the sea
A spray of eglantine where all about
The water rushed in torrents in and out
Among the wet, black rocks tempestuously.
To eastward high, a little promont'ry
Up-bore the billows on his iron breast;
And thence they rolled beyond him to the west
Surging about my eglantine and me.
And of the mightiest waves their spray that cast
White and imperious far into the air,
Not one but passed the sweet-briar safely by.
Till, midst the churning foam and surges there
That reached but could not clutch it, rising high
The tide itself did take it at the last.